Reddit reviews When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy

>Most people don't see a problem with concepts being compositional, e.g. the concept of water being made up of the concept of liquidity plus something else. In any case, the meaning of water, it's semantic content, is going to be the physical objects which are referred to as water by humans. If you think that isn't the meaning of water, then presumably you have your own sort of story about how water gets its meaning.

Well, I reject both your 'concepts' and your 'semantic content', or meaning. Rather than promoting the imposition of theoretical constructions on language I would say there are ways that words are used. You can say there are rules for the uses of words that we follow to understand each other.

Words themselves do not impose on us some reference, but we can use (some of) them in sentences to refer. The word 'water' does not refer to anything, unless used as a reference to a particular body or supply of water, like 'could you hand me the water', or 'let's go kayaking the water today'.

>I'm not sure how this is relevant. That is, I'm saying that the content of 'water' is its referents in the world.

Have you encountered Frege's context principle? I suggest you read about it, here's a Wikipedia article, but ignore what it says about 'semantic holism'.

I am saying a word has no real 'content' standing alone, though when we consider it as theoreticians we are inclined to impose some on it due to whatever psychological associations may pop up. Words have uses.

>Although there would still be the concept of water

Is that an empirical claim? 'There would still be X' is used empirically, in that X stands for something that can fail to be around. If so, how does the concepts look like, and how would you know they would still be around? Would they survive the cold winters without human accompaniment?

If it's not an empirical claim, and 'concept' does not refer to an object, which it does not, what you are saying makes no sense.

>The externalist thinks this anyway. The internalist thinks that concepts are dependent on minds.

And for that reason both camps are deluded.

>I don't know what this means.

Explanation by means of attempting to formulate theory is not the only possible approach to philosophical issues, although it has kept philosophy busy generating seemingly intractable problems for 2500 years. Here's a book that covers this and talks about (and exemplifies) the Wittgensteinian approach to the kinds of problems we have talked about: link.